1. Context
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia,
on April 23, 1899, into a family with a long history of public service and
scholarship. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Nabokov and his family went
into exile in England.
Trilingual in Russian, English, and French from an early age, Nabokov earned an
honors degree in Slavic and Romance languages from Trinity
College, Cambridge, in 1922. He embarked upon a
literary career, writing primarily in Russian. Among his notable early works
was a Russian translation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
In
1925, Nabokov married Vera Slonim, and in 1934 their only child, Dmitri, was
born. The Nabokovs lived in both Germany
and France before emigrating
to the United States in
1940, where Nabokov taught literature courses at Wellesley
and Cornell Universities. The move to America
also inspired Nabokov to begin writing in English.
By 1955, Nabokov had already published a number of novels but had yet to
create his masterpiece Lolita, which Nabokov began writing in 1949. It
was originally rejected by no fewer than four American publishers, who found
the story of a middle-aged professor’s lust for his preteen stepdaughter too
inflammatory for publication. Undaunted, Nabokov persisted, and Lolita
was eventually published in France
in 1955 by the marginally reputable Olympia Press. Though it was condemned in
some corners as scandalous trash, Lolita became an underground literary
sensation in France.
Driven by the growing critical acclaim for the book, Putnam published an
American edition of the novel in 1958. Some countries deemed Lolita
obscene and banned it, but the novel became a best seller in the United States,
despite its controversial subject matter.
In its frank discussions of forbidden desire and sexuality, Lolita was
revolutionary for its time. Though such writers as D. H. Lawrence and James
Joyce had written about sexuality at the turn of the century, and though the
evolution of psychology had brought the themes of sexuality and repression to
the forefront of popular culture, no book had so explicitly expplored the
darker elements of sex and desire. Nabokov was not a proponent of Freudian
psychology, but he could not ignore its impact on literature or on the study of
human emotion. In Lolita, he attempts to subvert the traditional views
of sexuality and psychology while pretending to pay homage to them.
Lolita also represents a classic example of postmodern literature.
Postmodernism arose in the early years of the twentieth century and
represented, in part, a move away from the notion that a novel should tell a
realistic story from an objective perspective. Postmodern writers are primarily
interested in writing that evokes the fragmentary nature of experience and the
complexity of language. Humbert Humbert, the protagonist of Lolita,
narrates the novel from a highly subjective point of view, and he uses rich,
sophisticated language to do so. Lolita contains a vast variety of
linguistic devices, including puns, multilingual expressions, artistic
allusions, word patterns, and references to other works. These devices followed
from the then-popular idea that a novel was not a fixed work of literature, but
rather a more fluid, organic creation that was interconnected with other media.
Humbert’s elegant and sinuous prose, however, conceals a subversive intent. The
beauty and intensity of the language allow readers to remain sympathetic to the
pedophile protagonist and compel them to read further, despite the numerous
distressing events within the novel.
Though Lolita is a fictional memoir, Nabokov actually shared many
personality traits with his protagonist Humbert Humbert. Both men were highly
educated, academically oriented European exiles who made their homes in America,
and both possessed a compelling gift for language. However, unlike the
pedophiliac, delusional Humbert, Nabokov was a devoted family man who lived a
quiet, scholarly existence. Because of Lolita’s success as a novel and
as a film, Nabokov had the funds to retire to Switzerland in 1960 and devote
himself exclusively to writing until his death in 1977. A prolific author,
Nabokov’s other notable works include Speak, Memory: An Autobiography
Revisited (1951), Pnin (1957), Pale Fire (1962), and Ada
or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969). Nabokov also developed talents and
hobbies besides writing. His passion for lepidoptera, the study of butterflies,
earned him a position with the Museum
of Natural History in New York. He was also a
skilled chess player, a creator of Russian crosswords, and an avid tennis
player.
Lolita was twice adapted for film. Stanley Kubrick directed the first
adaptation, starring James Mason, Sue Lyons, and Peter Sellers, in 1962.
Nabokov himself worked on the script, and the controversial film, though
generally well received, garnered criticism for being too darkly comical on the
subject of pedophilia. Lolita was adapted for film again in 1997, by
director Adrian Lyne, and starred Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, and Frank
Langella. The movie stirred up controversy once again, this time for its sex
scenes between Irons and the underage Swain. After some difficulty finding an
American distributor, Lyne released the movie to mixed reviews. While elements
of Lolita lend themselves to film, and though the novel explicitly
recognizes film as an influence, neither film fully captures the complicated
mix of acrobatic language, black comedy, and tender romantic sentiment for
which the novel had become famous. The novel has numerous references—from
crude, lowbrow puns to highly obscure scholarly references—and it encompasses a
vast array of human emotion—from tragic to comic. None of these elements come
through as effectively on screen as they do in the book itself.
2. Plot Overview
In the novel’s foreword, the fictional John Ray, Jr., Ph.D., explains the
strange story that will follow. According to Ray, he received the manuscript,
entitled Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male, from the
author’s lawyer. The author himself, known by the pseudonym of Humbert Humbert
(or H. H.), died in jail of coronary thrombosis while awaiting a trial. Ray
asserts that while the author’s actions are despicable, his writing remains
beautiful and persuasive. He also indicates that the novel will become a
favorite in psychiatric circles as well as encourage parents to raise better
children in a better world.
In the manuscript, Humbert relates his peaceful upbringing on the Riviera, where he
encounters his first love, the twelve-year-old Annabel Leigh. Annabel and the
thirteen-year-old Humbert never consummate their love, and Annabel’s death from
typhus four months later haunts Humbert. Although Humbert goes on to a career
as a teacher of English literature, he spends time in a mental institution and
works a succession of odd jobs. Despite his marriage to an adult woman, which
eventually fails, Humbert remains obsessed with sexually desirable and sexually
aware young girls. These nymphets, as he calls them, remind him of Annabel,
though he fails to find another like her. Eventually, Humbert comes to the United States and takes a room in the house of
widow Charlotte Haze in a sleepy, suburban New England
town. He becomes instantly infatuated with her twelve-year-old daughter
Dolores, also known as Lolita. Humbert follows Lolita’s moves constantly,
occasionally flirts with her, and confides his pedophiliac longings to a
journal. Meanwhile, Charlotte Haze, whom Humbert loathes, has fallen in love
with him. When Charlotte sends Lolita off to
summer camp, Humbert marries Charlotte
in order to stay near his true love. Humbert wants to be alone with Lolita and
even toys with the idea of killing Charlotte,
but he can’t go through with it. However, Charlotte
finds his diary and, after learning that he hates her but loves her daughter,
confronts him. Humbert denies everything, but Charlotte tells him she is leaving him and
storms out of the house. At that moment, a car hits her and she dies instantly.
Humbert goes to the summer camp and picks up Lolita. Only when they arrive
at a motel does he tell her that Charlotte
has died. In his account of events, Humbert claims that Lolita seduces him,
rather than the other way around. The two drive across the country for nearly a
year, during which time Humbert becomes increasingly obsessed with Lolita and
she learns to manipulate him. When she engages in tantrums or refuses his
advances, Humbert threatens to put her in an orphanage. At the same time, a strange
man seems to take an interest in Humbert and Lolita and appears to be following
them in their travels.
Humbert eventually gets a job at Beardsley
College somewhere in the
Northeast, and Lolita enrolls in school. Her wish to socialize with boys her
own age causes a strain in their relationship, and Humbert becomes more
restrictive in his rules. Nonetheless, he allows her to appear in a school
play. Lolita begins to behave secretively around Humbert, and he accuses her of
being unfaithful and takes her away on another road trip. On the road, Humbert
suspects that they are being followed. Lolita doesn’t notice anything, and
Humbert accuses her of conspiring with their stalker.
Lolita becomes ill, and Humbert must take her to the hospital. However, when
Humbert returns to get her, the nurses tell him that her uncle has already
picked her up. Humbert flies into a rage, but then he calms himself and leaves
the hospital, heartbroken and angry.
For the next two years, Humbert searches for Lolita, unearthing clues about
her kidnapper in order to exact his revenge. He halfheartedly takes up with a
woman named Rita, but then he receives a note from Lolita, now married and
pregnant, asking for money. Assuming that Lolita has married the man who had
followed them on their travels, Humbert becomes determined to kill him. He
finds Lolita, poor and pregnant at seventeen. Humbert realizes that Lolita’s
husband is not the man who kidnapped her from the hospital. When pressed,
Lolita admits that Clare Quilty, a playwright whose presence has been felt from
the beginning of the book, had taken her from the hospital. Lolita loved
Quilty, but he kicked her out when she refused to participate in a child
pornography orgy. Still devoted to Lolita, Humbert begs her to return to him.
Lolita gently refuses. Humbert gives her 4,000 dollars and then departs. He
tracks down Quilty at his house and shoots him multiple times, killing him.
Humbert is arrested and put in jail, where he continues to write his memoir,
stipulating that it can only be published upon Lolita’s death. After Lolita
dies in childbirth, Humbert dies of heart failure, and the manuscript is sent
to John Ray, Jr., Ph.D.
3. Character List
Humbert Humbert
Humbert Humbert uses language to seduce the readers of his memoir, and he
almost succeeds in making himself a sympathetic pedophile. He criticizes the
vulgarity of American culture, establishing himself as an intellectual. His
ironic, self-mocking tone and his complicated word games divert readers’
attention from the horrors he describes. His skill with language makes him a
persuasive narrator, often able to convince readers to see his perspective.
These linguistic skills, along with his distinguished appearance, erudition,
and European roots, enable him to seduce the women around him as well. Humbert
has never wanted for love.
As a young boy, Humbert embarks on a short-lived, unconsummated, and
ultimately tragic romance with Annabel Leigh, a “nymphet” (a prepubescent girl
between the ages of about nine and fourteen).. Since then, he has been obsessed
with the particular type of girl Annabel represents. He marries adult women in
an effort to overcome his craving for nymphets, but the marriages always
dissolve, and the longings remain. Despite his failed marriages, his mental problems,
and his sporadic employment, Humbert still attracts attention consistently from
the opposite sex, though he usually disdains this attention. He claims to have
loved only Lolita, and his obsession eventually consumes him.
Humbert is a completely unreliable narrator, and his myopic self-delusion
and need for sympathy make many of his statements suspect. He claims Lolita
seduced him and that she was in complete control of the relationship. However,
Humbert, as the adult, clearly has the upper hand. He controls the money and
Lolita’s freedom, and he often repeats that Lolita has nowhere to go if she
leaves him. When Lolita occasionally shrinks from his touch, he views her
reluctance as an example of her mercurial nature, rather than as a child’s
repulsion at an adult’s sexual advances. Humbert claims that his feelings for
Lolita are rooted in love, not lust, but his self-delusion prevents him from
making this case convincingly. Alternately slavish and domineering, Humbert has
little control over his feelings and impulses. He never considers the morality
of his actions, and he refuses to acknowledge that Lolita may not share his
feelings. As his relationship with Lolita deteriorates, Humbert becomes more
and more controlling of her and less and less in control of himself. He
considers Quilty’s love for Lolita deviant and corrupting, and he murders
Quilty to avenge Lolita’s lost innocence, a seemingly drastic act of denial of
his own complicity in that loss. Only near the end of the novel, when he admits
that he himself stole Lolita’s childhood, does Humbert allow the truth to break
through his solipsism.
Lolita
Although the name Lolita has become synonymous with underage sexpot,
Nabokov’s Lolita is simply a stubborn child. She is neither very beautiful nor
particularly charming, and Humbert often remarks on her skinny arms, freckles,
vulgar language, and unladylike behavior. Lolita attracts the depraved Humbert
not because she is precocious or beautiful, but because she is a nymphet,
Humbert’s ideal combination of childishness and the first blushes of womanhood.
To nonpedophiles, Lolita would be a rather ordinary twelve-year-old girl. Her
ordinariness is a constant source of frustration for Humbert, and she
consistently thwarts his attempts to educate her and make her more
sophisticated. She adores popular culture, enjoys mingling freely with other
people, and, like most prepubescent girls, has a tendency toward the dramatic.
However, when she shouts and rebels against Humbert, she exhibits more than the
frustration of an ordinary adolescent: sheclearly feels trapped by her
arrangement with Humbert, but she is powerless to extricate herself.
Lolita changes radically throughout the novel, despite aging only about six
years. At the beginning, she is an innocent, though sexually experienced child
of twelve. Humbert forces her transition into a more fully sexual being, but
she never seems to acknowledge that her sexual activities with Humbert are very
different from her fooling around with Charlie in the bushes at summer camp. By
the end of the novel, she has become a worn-out, pregnant wife of a laborer.
Throughout her life, Lolita sustains an almost complete lack of self-awareness.
As an adult, she recollects her time with Humbert dispassionately and doesn’t
seem to hold a grudge against either him or Quilty for ruining her childhood.
Her attitude suggests that as a child she had nothing for them to steal,
nothing important enough to value. Her refusal to look too deeply within
herself, and her tendency to look forward rather than backward, might represent
typically American traits, but Humbert also deserves part of the blame. Humbert
objectifies Lolita, and he robs her of any sense of self. Lolita exists only as
the object of his obsession, never as an individual. The lack of self-awareness
in a child is typical and often charming. In the adult Lolita, the absence of
self-awareness seems tragic.
Clare Quilty
Mysterious, manipulative, and utterly corrupt, Quilty is Humbert’s
doppelgänger. He serves as a kind of mirror image of Humbert, reflecting
similar traits and thoughts but embodying a darker side of those
characteristics that Humbert stridently disavows. Quilty and Humbert both adore
nymphets, but they act on their adoration in very different ways. While Humbert
slavishly worships and idealizes Lolita, Quilty takes her for granted and
wishes to denigrate her through pornography. Humbert paints himself as a man in
love, while Quilty is, in many ways, a more typical pedophile. Both Quilty and
Humbert are men of letters, well read and very persuasive, but Quilty has a
much more successful career. Quilty is also far less subtle than Humbert about
his nymphet obsession. Quilty’s professional success and reputation perhaps
allow him to get away with his deviant behavior, though he is well known for
his predilection for young girls and has already faced charges. At his final
encounter with Humbert, Quilty’s baroque speech, cavalier attitude, and
persistent game-playing imply that he, like Humbert, is not quite sane. He dies
in the middle of an attempt to bribe Humbert with a variety of perverse
pleasures.
Physically, Quilty appears infrequently in the novel, but his presence
asserts itself through a relentless series of hidden clues. These clues, which
include initials, place names, titles, and many other references and
suggestions, build and intensify, creating a dense cloud above the actual story
that eventually bursts when Lolita identifies Quilty as her lover. The clues
reinforce the idea that Quilty is Humbert’s double, since he exists more as a
shadow than as a living human being. That Lolita adores the intangible Quilty
and remains unmoved by solid, present Humbert represents one of the novel’s
crueler twists, and suggests that Lolita may indeed have had her eye on a future
outside of Humbert’s control.
Charlotte Haze
A typical middle-class, middle-aged American woman, Charlotte Haze aspires
to sophistication and European elegance, but her attempts fall comically flat.
She is religious and not particularly imaginative. Charlotte sees Humbert as the epitome of the
world-weary European lover of—and in—grand literature. He represents her chance
to become the woman she dreams of being, but her vulgar, self-conscious stabs
at sophistication, such as her tendency to drop celebrity names and
mispronounce French phrases, make Humbert cringe. Humbert usually refers to her
derisively as Mama or the Haze woman. Charlotte’s
love letter to Humbert traffics mainly in self-pitying martyrdom and
melodramatic gestures. Nabokov portrays Charlotte
with so little sympathy that the tragic elements of her character almost
disappear. She dies, after all, knowing that the man she loves lusts after her
own daughter.
Charlotte is
not particularly fond of Lolita. Although Lolita’s adolescent tantrums certainly
don’t make her a very likeable child, Charlotte’s
distain signals a greater lack of motherly concern than normal. Charlotte seems to see
Lolita as a threat, almost as competition, and she sends Lolita to camp to keep
her from hindering her romantic plans for Humbert. Humbert, of course, sees Charlotte only as an
obstacle to his romantic plans for Lolita. Though Charlotte
is not an overtly kind and wonderful mother, her presence does protect
Lolita—when Charlotte
dies, Humbert is free to kidnap Lolita and change her life forever.
4. Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Power of Language
Nabokov revered words and believed that the proper language could
elevate any material to the level of art. In Lolita,
language effectively triumphs over shocking content and gives it
shades of beauty that perhaps it does not deserve. Lolita is
filled with sordid subjects, including rape, murder, pedophilia,
and incest. However, Humbert Humbert, in telling his story, uses
puns, literary allusions, and repeating linguistic patterns to render
this dark tale in an enchanting form. In this way, Humbert seduces
his readers as fully and slyly as he seduces Lolita herself. Words
are his power, and he uses them to distract, confuse, and charm.
He is a pedophile and a murderer, but he builds up elaborate defenses
and explanations for his actions, and his language shields him from
judgment. With Lolita, Nabokov’s ultimate achievement
may be that he forces readers to be complicit in Humbert’s crimes.
In order to uncover the actual story of pedophilia, rape, and murder
within the text, readers have to immerse themselves in Humbert’s
words and their shadowy meanings—and thus they must enter Humbert’s
mind. By engaging so closely with Humbert’s linguistic trickery,
readers cannot hold him at a far enough distance to see him for
the man he truly is.
The Dispiriting Incompatibility of European and American Cultures
Throughout Lolita, the interactions between
European and American cultures result in perpetual misunderstandings
and conflict. Charlotte Haze, an American, is drawn to the sophistication
and worldliness of Humbert, a European. She eagerly accepts Humbert not
so much because of who he is, but because she is charmed by what
she sees as the glamour and intellect of Humbert’s background. Humbert
has no such reverence for Charlotte. He openly mocks the superficiality
and transience of American culture, and he views Charlotte as nothing
but a simple-minded housewife. However, he adores every one of Lolita’s
vulgarities and chronicles every detail of his tour of America—he
enjoys the possibilities for freedom along the open American road.
He eventually admits that he has defiled the country rather than
the other way around. Though Humbert and Lolita develop their own
version of peace as they travel together, their union is clearly
not based on understanding or acceptance. Lolita cannot comprehend
the depth of Humbert’s devotion, which he overtly links to art,
history, and culture, and Humbert will never truly recognize Lolita’s
unwillingness to let him sophisticate her. Eventually, Lolita leaves
Humbert for the American Quilty, who does not bore her with high
culture or grand passions.
The Inadequacy of Psychiatry
Humbert’s passion for Lolita defies easy psychological
analysis, and throughout Lolita Humbert mocks psychiatry’s
tendency toward simplistic, logical explanations. In the foreword
to Lolita, John Ray, Jr., Ph.D., claims that Humbert’s
tale will be of great interest to psychiatry, but throughout his
memoir Humbert does his best to discredit the entire field of study,
heaping the most scorn on Freudian psychology. For example, he enjoys
lying to the psychiatrists at the sanitarium. He reports mockingly
that Pratt, the headmistress of Lolita’s school, diagnoses Lolita
as sexually immature, wholly unaware that she actually has an overly
active sex life with her stepfather. By undermining the authority
and logic of the psychiatric field, Nabokov demands that readers
view Humbert as a unique and deeply flawed human being, but not
an insane one. Humbert further thwarts efforts of scientific categorization
by constantly describing his feelings for Lolita as an enchantment
or spell, closer to magic than to science. He tries to prove that
his love is not a mental disease but an enormous, strange, and uncontrollable
emotion that resists easy classification. Nabokov himself was deeply
critical of psychiatry, and Lolita is, in a way,
an attack on the field.
The Alienation Caused by Exile
Humbert and Lolita are both exiles, and, alienated from
the societies with which they are familiar, they find themselves
in ambiguous moral territory where the old rules seem not to apply.
Humbert chooses exile and comes willingly from Europe to America,
while Lolita is forced into exile when Charlotte dies. She becomes detached
from her familiar community of Ramsdale and goes on the road with
Humbert. Together, they move constantly and belong to no single
fixed place. The tourists Humbert and Lolita meet on the road are
similarly transient, belonging to a generic America rather than
to a specific place. In open, unfamiliar territory, Humbert and Lolita
form their own set of rules, where normal sexual and familial relationships
become twisted and corrupt. Both Humbert and Lolita have become
so disconnected from ordinary society that neither can fully recognize
how morally depraved their actions are. Humbert cannot see his own
monstrosity, and Lolita shows only occasional awareness of herself
of a victim.
Though Humbert sweeps Lolita away so that they can find
a measure of freedom, their exile ultimately traps them. Lolita
is bound to Humbert because she has nowhere else to go, and though Humbert
dreams of leaving America with Lolita, he eventually accepts that
he will stay in America until he dies. Though each of them undergoes
one final exile, Lolita to Dick Schiller and Humbert to prison,
it is clear that they are first and foremost exiled from their own
selves, an exile so total that they could never return to their original
places in the worlds they once left. Exile in Lolita is
tragic and permanent.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Butterflies
Images of and references to butterflies and lepidopterology,
the study of butterflies and moths, appear throughout the novel, emphasizing
not only the physical similarities between the fragile insect and
young Lolita but also the distant and clinical way in which Humbert
views his lovely prey. He effectively studies, captures, and pins
them down, destroying the very delicate, living quality he so adores.
Virtually every time Humbert describes a nymphet, he uses such terms
as frail, fragile, supple, silky,
or fairy-like, all of which could just as easily
describe butterflies. Like butterflies, nymphets are elusive, becoming
ordinary teenagers in the blink of an eye. Lolita, in particular,
undergoes a significant metamorphosis, changing from innocent girl-child
to exhausted wife and mother-to-be. Next to such delicate and mercurial
creatures, Humbert becomes aware of his own monstrosity, often referring
to himself as a lumbering brute.
Doubles
Quilty is Humbert’s double in the novel and represents
Humbert’s darker side. Humbert is evil in many ways, but Quilty
is more evil, and his presence suggests that the line between good
and evil is blurred rather than distinct. Humbert and Quilty seem
near opposites for much of the novel. Humbert adores and worships
Lolita, while Quilty uses and ultimately abandons her. Humbert presents his
own feelings for Lolita as tender and Quilty’s as depraved. However,
the men are more similar than different. Both are educated and literary.
Both, of course, are pedophiles. Humbert sees himself as the force
of good, avenging Lolita’s corruption, yet he himself originally robbed
Lolita of her innocence.
By the end of the novel, Humbert and Quilty become even
more closely identified with one another. When Humbert and Lolita
play tennis one day, Humbert leaves to take a phone call, and Quilty sneaks
in on the game to briefly become Lolita’s partner. Lolita eventually
leaves Humbert for Quilty, but her new life is hardly an improvement.
When Humbert finally confronts Quilty, the men become one and the
same as they struggle with each other. Humbert, describing their
fight, says, “We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled
over us.” His jumbled use of the first-person and third-person plurals
indicates that he and Quilty are no longer distinct from one another.
The already blurred line between the two men has now disappeared
entirely.
Games
Almost all the characters in Lolita engage
in games. Sometimes they consist of innocent amusement, such as
when Humbert tries to interest Lolita in tennis and dreams of making
her a tennis star. Humbert also plays many silly games with Lolita
to get her attention and to keep her compliant. This sense of play
reinforces the fact that Lolita is still a child and that Humbert
must constantly entertain her. Games also distract characters from
more serious issues and allow them to hide sinister motives. Humbert
and Godin play chess so that they can pass the time without revealing
their true selves. Quilty, in particular, plays word games with
his hotel aliases, leaving puzzles for Humbert to decipher. The
characters play games to hide the feelings they cannot reveal, to
further their own ends, and to dissuade those who seek to discover
the truth, including readers. Though the games start out as innocuous
and childlike, they soon become deadly manipulations.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Theater
The theater becomes a symbol of artifice and artistry
in Lolita. Humbert blames Lolita’s newfound ability
to lie on her experience in the school play. Quilty uses the same
school play to bring Lolita to him, and Lolita is awed by the theater
because of Quilty’s influence. This is particularly poignant for
Humbert, as he himself was never able to interest Lolita in any
artistic endeavors. Ultimately, Lolita itself can
be seen as a marvel of stagecraft: using language, theater requires
an audience to willingly suspend its collective disbelief, in order
to place themselves imaginatively in the world of the play. Like
a theater audience, a reader may be aware of the craft and artifice
involved in the narrative’s construction, but he or she nonetheless
becomes a willing participant in the illusion. This involvement takes
on a darker tone for the reader of Lolita, as the
force of Nabokov’s artistry manages to make an incestuous pedophile
not only understandable but also oddly sympathetic.
Prison
Even though Humbert writes Lolita from
his prison cell, his confinement begins long before his murder of
Quilty. From the moment he loses Annabel and realizes that he worships
nymphets, Humbert understands that he is in a prison of his own
making. He knows that his proclivities are forbidden by society,
so he must put forth a respectable façade and hide his true desires.
Nabokov also uses the concept of the prison metaphorically to symbolizeHumbert’s
secret self. Humbert is initially imprisoned by his secret love
for nymphets, then by his love for Lolita. By the end of the novel,
however, Humbert has completely flouted all of society’s rules and
thus escapes from his confinement. At that moment, though his body
languishes in a real, physical prison, he finds himself free of
the prison of respectability, and can thus reveal—and revel in—his
true self for the first time. The prison, paradoxically, becomes
a symbol of his psychological freedom.
